has set Saturday 23 May as the launch date for Two Weeks In August, its new eight-part drama set in Greece and led by Jessica Raine. The series will air on One and be available on iPlayer.
The drama follows Zoe, played by Raine, and her loved ones on a holiday with family and friends that begins with an illicit kiss and ends with the group trapped on an island. What starts as a dream vacation turns into a nightmare, and the adults turn on each other as they try to work out who is to blame.
The cast also includes Damien Molony, Nicholas Pinnock, Leila Farzad, Antonia Thomas and Hugh Skinner. The broadcaster has described the series as “tantalisingly erotic,” a signal that it is leaning into the messy private lives at the heart of the story as much as the holiday setting itself.
That focus was central to creator Catherine Shepherd’s thinking long before the release date was announced. She said she wanted the relationships in the drama to feel “as funny and sad, as thrilling, beautiful, ridiculous and heartbreaking as real relationships between humans are,” and said she spent a week with an “amazing clinical psychologist” building the characters’ family trees and backstories. Shepherd said the work helped ensure “the psychology of who the characters were was truthful.”
Raine, who is best known to many viewers as a Call the Midwife icon, said the key question is how audiences will respond to Zoe and the decisions she makes to get what she wants. She said the idea of a woman deciding not to sacrifice everything, and choosing to put herself first, still feels revolutionary, adding that she thinks every woman feels that and that it is what will appeal.
That is what gives Two Weeks In August its edge. Beneath the sunlit holiday setting is a story about what happens when adult friendships, marriages and loyalties are pushed far enough to crack — and the series appears built to make the audience decide whether Zoe is acting selfishly, bravely or simply honestly. If the show lands as intended, that judgment will be the point.
